


In Porphyry

by Bryn Lantry (Bryn)



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1986-01-01
Updated: 1986-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 14:17:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/394787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bryn/pseuds/Bryn%20Lantry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Avon finds Blake in a gay bar</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Porphyry

**Author's Note:**

> Printed in that dear and queer zine 'touched', issue 7, 1986, editors Jane Carnall and friends. Here for the history - and for Joyce.  
> A clumsy attempt to queer them. You notice they have to smoke silly weed to... familiarise them? Ika's cigarettes (much, much later) talk my language - and hers, and she uses them well.

##  
##

Purple fumes collected about the rafters from the narcotic weed everyone on this world seemed addicted to. Avon, listless even before the drug hit him, lingered in the doorway. Checking the tracer he wandered in, disinterested. Preoccupied with his own weary, obsessive problems.

It was a few minutes before he bothered to look about. When he did it was to notice a pair draped over the bar and each other – both men. Avon pursed his lips. More liberal than Earth, was the only comment he was willing to make to himself. Surveying the place it dawned on him that there wasn't a female in sight – not that anyone appeared deterred by the lack.

Pausing, Avon glanced at his tracer again. Well – Blake was within ten metres. He blinked, cocked his head, made a noncommittal grimace and edged deeper in, weaving fastidiously through the convivial crowd. He felt like an alien here, though one fascinated by the beauty to which he did not belong.

Elbows on the bar, Avon finally distinguished the familiar burly shoulders. Blake had his boots up on a table, a mug in one hand and his most engaging grin on. Not a little curious, Avon squinted to see whom that smile was intended to win over this time. It never failed, that disarming smile – some people sold their souls for it, thought Avon with an ironic and sad quirk of the mouth.

Blake's companion sported a beard.

As an excuse to avert his eyes for a moment Avon paid for a drink. His expression had gone evasive and quiet. Finding a stool he fastened a hungry stare on the oblivious Blake. Avon wasn't prepared for this. Men – it was outlawed in the homogenous, puritanical society of Earth. But then Blake had always been a non-conformist. Avon used to wonder just where that bitter resentment against convention and authority sprang from. What had caused the crippling hurt which Blake made a good job of glossing over with his easy affability. But Blake was an Alpha, and Avon had never seriously dreamt...

Arm around the Sevdan, Blake was doing a professional job of chatting him up. The shy, warm crinkles about Blake's eyes belied his casual manner, expressed a need he didn't put into words. The bearded man appeared quite taken. Then Blake bent, rapidly and without warning, to his mouth.

Though unable to look away Avon had to screw up his face a little. Blake didn't withdraw from the kiss, just pressed it further, with kind demands. The Sevdan kneaded Blake's shoulders and chest, sinking compliantly in his seat. Easing his hold, Blake let his tongue flutter lightly over the other man's lips, his face, down to his throat, murmuring comments now and then with that achingly charming smile. The ubiquitous purple smoke weaved about the warm pair and dimmed the light from the hanging brass lamps. However highlights glinted on Blake's sloping cheek, painting a line in three-quarter profile, and abruptly that line seemed a terribly lovely thing to Avon. Blake cupped the stranger's face in his large, handsome hands while his own shirt was unbuttoned. The tendons in his strong arms knotted as fingers traced his nipples: his muscles seemed to quiver.

Avon's face whipped aside, then down to his drink, which he downed savagely. There was a hardness like a jagged object in his throat, which was difficult to swallow around. His eyes blinked several times to combat the prickling that had begun in them.

Blake queer? Or was he merely playing around, an idle sexual dilettante, in the way Vila discussed what it would be like to have a boy or a Warg Strangler or indeed any creature that popped into his one-track mind. Perhaps this meant nothing to Blake – the men smiling, twining together, the uninhibited appreciation of one's own gender.

Then again Blake looked so at home, so at ease. Avon had never seen him as tranquil as when he sipped from his glass, a hand gently ruffling the blond head that lounged contentedly on his bared, smooth chest.

There was no such peace in Avon. He felt like a lonely child in the ice, nose pressed in mournful awe against the window pane that opened to a world of laughing faces and a cosy fire. Careful to keep out of Blake's line of sight, shrinking inconspicuously into himself rather as Vila did, he considered his options. He had traced Blake on a stupid, risky impulse, just on the off-chance Blake was having as miserable a holiday as he was. Just on the off-chance Blake might say something warm and inviting, and the two of them began to talk...

But obviously Blake was happily occupied. Avon found himself unwilling to leave. Though whenever he glanced at that blond head cradled between Blake's chest and hands, something tore in his breast, like stitches in a wound gradually coming loose. He ordered a second drink to try and rid himself of his cautious, dignified, brainwashed Alpha shell.

How long ago was it Blake had captivated him? How long, and how many grim nights of emotional turbulence and of denial? How much self-castigation for being unable to respond adequately with a woman? Anna had been the one grand love of his life precisely because she had died early, before Avon had got around to the ordeal of proving himself capable of pleasing her, capable of being pleased by her pale, frail, female body. No-one knew it had been a celibate passion – Avon guarded that secret paranoiacally.

If Blake had behaved this way on Earth, there was no denying the man had awesome courage. Yet he had never mentioned this part of himself on the Liberator. Perhaps after that low-hitting, and to Avon intriguing, accusation of paedophilia, the subject had become too painful...

Avon's face was all but buried in his glass, welcoming the waves of light-headedness that swept over him with the drink. When he sensed someone hesitating behind him. Eyes lifting under his brows, he noted the blond-bearded Sevdan was alone in his seat. Not daring to look round, he felt his pulse quicken with something like fear, his breath go shallow in his lungs.

Just when the anticipation was becoming intolerable, a firm but tentative hand, large and warm and familiar, came to rest on his shoulder. “Kerr,” came Blake's rich baritone voice. “I noticed you here and thought I'd stroll over and say hello. Nice to see you.” He didn't quite add, in a bar such as this.

Avon composed his colourless face before turning. “I was searching for you. Tracked you with that.” He nodded to the tracer they all wore.

“Ah.” Blake took away the hand, as if in apology for the assumption he had made.

“I was about to leave,” Avon hurried on, eyes strictly down. “Just paused for a drink.”

“You traced me just to turn around a disappear? Seems a pity.”

“Seeing as you have company. I don't want to interrupt.”

Blake seemed unsure of Avon, but unlike Avon not unsure of himself or the company. Taking a stool beside his shipmate he leant his powerful, gentle arms on the stained wooden bar. He shrugged, deciding to take a chance on talking openly. “There's not a lot to interrupt. Places like these are nice, but... when you only ever visit them for a few hours here and there about the galaxy, it's superficial comfort. Just a solace to enable you to slog on for a few months more. They keep one from going crazy, I guess.” He grinned.

“I wouldn't know,” said Avon. “I think that's too late for me.” Feeling on firmer ground because Blake hadn't yet glanced back regretfully at that blond upstart, he let the confused, hurt resentment fill his eyes. “Why didn't you tell me?” he grated.

“You're the last person I was likely to confide in.”

“Why? Because we never exchange a civil word?”

“Because I cared too much about how you might react. By now I'm pretty used to being damned as a faggot, but if you were to use the words Federation citizens are conditioned to fling at such as me... well, it would hurt. That's all.” He let out a sharp breath, and smiled. “I always hoped we might find a way to become close someday. I was scared I'd destroy any chance of that.”

“What do you imagine I am, a bigot? I can form my own judgements, I don't swallow Federation propaganda.” Avon's defiance held a tinge of desperation. He had waded through so many doubts, felt such a crushing weight of secrecy and guilt, believing himself to be weird in a normal world, on a normal ship. “You were the one who was always so forbiddingly moral.”

“For me, this is what morality is all about.” Quietly, Blake nodded around the bar. “As you see, I had very personal motives for fighting for a greater freedom than is in fashion on Earth.”

With an unsteady, trembly hand, Avon lit up one of the soft rolls of spicy tobacco that gave off a purple smoke. Drew long and hard on it. “Like some porphyry?” he said to Blake, voice a little hoarse.

“Well, my head's swimming as it is...” However, Blake's fingers took the roll, self-assured. Then lingered with a delicate, almost furtive warmth a hair's breadth from Avon's. Welcoming anything Avon might care to give. As if inwardly chiding himself, Blake snatched the hand away and drew on the cigarette. His eyes met Avon's with a frank, though faintly humorous, look of admiration.

Avon found a silly smile quirking at his mouth, because Blake's glance was as shy and mischievous as a playful puppydog's. When Blake's hand rested casually on the bar Avon stared at it, willing himself to touch it but afraid and holding back.

“You're neglecting your friend,” he said, hollowly.

“Tem? He's nice – quite gorgeous, too. But he's hardly a friend.”

“He'll find someone else, though – I didn't mean to spoil things for you, you were doing such a excellent job of seducing him. And I know how frustrating life in space can be.”

“Well...” Blake caught the Sevdan's eye, and exchanged a friendly wink which sent a spasm of jealousy burning through Avon. “I don't deny that. All the same, I'd rather talk to you.”

“Why?” Avon's voice was a pained laugh. “You never did before.”

“I like you,” Blake said simply. “Usually, rather too deeply to chat to you superficially like I can to Jenna. One can never be superficial with you. Either one has to hate you, or...” he shrugged.

“Or what?” Unable to count on candidness in himself, Avon was counting on Blake's.

“Or adore you.”

Giddy with the porphyry, Avon leaned towards Blake, his body drawn undeniably to the other man's. Blake had been waiting for it, and Avon found the solid, muscled arm cradling his shoulders. Head down, Avon half lay against Blake, his body yearning, stimulated by the sight and scent of the bared chest below his cheek. Being near to the other man was a feast for his senses and a blessed relief for his mind.

Blake's face caressed his hair, and Avon felt the indrawn breath of deep satisfaction. “Kerr, you worry me. You frustrate me and drag emotion out of me and sometimes you scare me. I want to help you – I always did. I always strayed so close to worshipping you. But I don't mean to heavy you – just because you've found me in this place, don't get the idea I...”

“You find me unattractive?” he asked drily.

There was a pause. “I adore you in every way. I can't pretend different.”

All Avon wanted to feel was Blake's warm, fleshy mouth, the strong dampness of his tongue. Lifting his head he fixed Blake with his enigmatically amused look. Blake murmured, “You're beautiful. I mean, you're very handsome, Avon, women must go mad for you.”

“Perhaps. I never cared to find out.”

Blake kissed him then, abrupt and hungry, pressing Avon's face close with both hands buried in his hair. Trembling, Avon lifted his fingers to dig into Blake's wide shoulders beneath his loosened shirt. Blake tasted heady and sweet, and Avon thought how Blake would inevitably overpower him if they were to wrestle. Even though Avon would fight dirty Blake would end holding him down with easy strength.

Breaking away, Blake smiled once and relaxed on his stool. Not touching Avon but content that their shoulders were companionably side by side, content to glance at him now and then. Their fingers played stealthy contact games handing the porphyry roll back and forth.

Avon said, “I ought to warn you I become distressingly truthful when I'm stoned. About the only time I do.” Blake's placid, calm silence was encouraging. “It's been hell. I was never sure whether I really wanted you or whether it was just my crazy imagination... a fanciful illusion that would burst if I tried it out.”

“Have you been with a man?”

Uncertainly, he shook his head. “Not to speak of. Though a long time ago there was Tynus.”

“Your friend from Fosforen?”

“Yes, we drifted apart, he married and become distant and wary. So I made a stab at normality too, with Anna. I was a fool to trust him on Fosforen, for years since he backed off he's been almost vengeful towards me – afraid. What relationship we still had grew cold and formal. It used to be different.”

“Tell me.”

“As boys we had an idealistic friendship. He was stupidly sentimental in those days, and I was stupidly loyal. We were both naïve enough to openly declare we loved one another – as friends. Nothing happened between us. It dragged on for years and nothing happened. Yet – touching him, laying an arm about him, was such a significant thing, and we made such a ritual of our emotion, that... Only later did I wake up to the sexual foundation of our friendship. And wondered whether he would have objected had I nudged it a little further.”

“You mentioned... you'd thought about me?”

“Only involuntarily, as a rule. I was always cursed with a vivid and wayward imagination, but in this case I figured it would do me more harm than good. So I kept it under lock and key.”

“You should have said. Even if I hadn't been gay, Kerr, I would at least have sympathised. Particularly as I was so desperate for you to need or want me in some way – any way.”

“Indeed, I've noticed you pouring your heart out to me.”

“I wanted to – oh, there are such things I wanted to tell you.” More confident, Blake locked his thick, warm fingers into Avon's. “Let me into your bed and you won't be able to shut me up. All the things you mean to me, the way you look into my eyes, the things you make me long to do... You better gulp down your drink, you're coming with me.”

Suddenly Blake was in his impulsive, authoritative mood, hauling Avon off his stool. Hand firmly in hand Blake led the way through the crowd, up a flight of stairs in the shadows at the rear. As he was impelled past a row of small, shut chambers Avon ventured, “Er, Roj, precisely what lies at the end of this particular garden path?”

“Don't worry, some of these are B/D cells and what-have-you but I'm only taking you to my rented room. I've been sleeping here.”

“I can imagine,” said Avon, who was a bit out of his depth and couldn't, really. When Blake unlocked his door Avon added, “How many have been here before me in the last couple of days?”

“Quiet, I don't want to think about all this. I want to explore every nook and cranny of you.”

“The crannies sound particularly exciting.” Avon was saying anything that came into his head. Smelling the street and the night from the open window, glancing at the cramped, old-fashioned fireplace and the quilt-covered bed, his heart began a steady, heavy thump. Blake was a little drunk and roughly impetuous, winding his arms about Avon from behind. Nuzzling damply into Avon's neck.

Unexpectedly Avon discovered his knees were feeble, as the mouth at his neck nipped him fondly. Relying on Blake to support his weight he sank back into the bear hug. It was like a warm nest. Nothing had ever felt as comfortable as Blake's thick-set, steady torso.

Before long Avon was sensible of a hardness through Blake's soft trousers, and Blake cradling his buttocks against it. Fingertips like butterflies danced over Avon's thighs and rump and he gasped, sensitive to a degree he hadn't guessed. “Okay by you?” came Blake's soft, lingering voice.

Avon was deftly transported to the bed. Mesmerised by the sensation he chafed his body luxuriously against Blake's, from his fingers in the curly hair to his calves and feet rubbing Blake's. Pushing and pulling to have as much contact as possible. Blake was loosening bits and pieces of their clothing, making heavy weather of it due to Avon pressing repeatedly against him in unadulterated tactile hedonism, the way a cat might. The man's all but purring, Blake thought with a grin.

From below the wooden floor Avon could make out the noises of the bar. Voices, music, shouts, blended to a harmonious blur. Blake seemed to be conscious of not a worry in the world, engrossed in the present. Taking Avon's hand he drove his tongue into the cranny between each finger, which produced a languorous, sensuous smile on Avon's face.

“And Jenna?” Avon spoke suddenly.

The name, and the tone, had an affect like a bucket of cold water... albeit a small one. “So what about Jenna?”

“And Vila and Gan? And your public credibility? Half the population of Earth believe you raped three boys. Considering the popular attitude that once a pervert you're under suspicion for any crime in the book, the other half are likely to believe it if word gets out you sleep with men. And what do our crewmates think of queers? They were all brought up with the same brainwashing as us – the reaction is now instinctive, involuntary. As far as we know none of them had a motive for resisting it.”

“Granted I've never ventured to sit Jenna down and say...”

“You virtually lead her on. Does having a woman hanging on your arm make you feel happier about yourself? A screen to hide behind?”

“Avon...” Body still tense with passion, Blake buried his face in the crook of Avon's underarm, loving the masculine smell. “I admit I've resorted to just ignoring the issue. Perhaps I've been afraid. But I've had no-one to fight for. Back on Earth, in the Freedom Party – there was a man. We were together for ten years. For that I brought shame on my family, ridicule... because there was a point to it, with him I was sure there was something worth fighting for in being gay. When there was no longer any recompense for defying custom, no-one to come home to... I felt so spiritless without him, less brave, and shelved sexual freedom to concentrate only on social freedom, political freedom, any freedom but sexual,” he concluded with a kind of laugh.

“What I mean to find out is, should I expect to be disowned on the flight deck? Or on the Liberator entirely, for that matter?”

“You always did ask your most difficult questions at the most difficult times. It's a small ship, relatively speaking. I guess we'll just have to take it as it comes.”

“I was just worried that you were going to take my virginity only to give it back to me once the holiday's over.” Lazily, wickedly, he smiled. “I don't want my virtue back, you know.”

“What I mean to steal, I mean to steal permanently.” Having bared most of their flesh Blake dragged up the thick quilt to bury them. Tentatively, enjoying it on too deep a level to let his actions be more than gradual, he gathered Avon's body close to his, and rocked it. “That is, your virtue, and if only I can, that elusive and stubborn little thing they call your heart...” Blake kissed the breast it was hidden in, and without ceremony Avon tugged the curly head to his nipples. He squirmed under Blake's obliging teeth and tongue.

When a strong grip drew Avon's hand down to his companion's penis, the fever deepened in Avon's face and his palm rubbed the swollen flesh absorbedly. “I can't match you,” he whispered, delighting in the fact. “But then I never really could...”

Avon had always fancied that being rolled onto his belly would feel impersonal, that the position lacked the closeness of lying face to face with a woman. He discovered how wonderfully wrong he had been. To have Blake's light teasing touch caress his back was intolerably exciting. When the man's full weight settled there, smothering his shoulderblades and rump, Avon nearly came into the sheets straight away.

Sliding gently in and out, Blake eased Avon's face about in order to bury it against his own. The taller, heavier man lapped at Avon's lips and Avon strained his neck round to kiss him deeply. The two lay quiet and intimate, making love. Faces clandestine together in the pillow, breathing each other's breath, limbs tangled. Avon had never known such sharing and privacy, nor the heightening ecstasy of Blake's strong strokes. He was trapped between the protection of Blake's body and the secret world of the bed, while Blake, oblivious to all above him, faced down to that same secret world and finally let loose his all into it.

Slick with sweat and helplessly aroused, Avon writhed energetically under the weight that pinned him down. Digging into the muscles of Blake's shoulder he came, into the hand which crept underneath him to catch the miniature milky flood.

“You've gathered that I love you, I take it?” Avon murmured drowsily.

“I was rather hoping you might do.”

“How long do we have left on Sevda?”

“Couple of days, as far as I remember in my present state.”

“We'll spend them here. Let's get rotten drunk downstairs and cavort with shameless abandon together in like-minded company while we have the chance.”

“Whatever you like,” Blake laughed affectionately.

“Maybe we can even delve into the mysteries of one or two of those rooms we passed.”

“Kerr, you learn too fast.”

“You're an inspiring teacher. Where's your sense of adventure, Roj?”

“Whatever you like,” said Blake again, hugging the breath out of him. “I want to indulge you. Spoil you. I've always wanted to spoil you like a child. Since you're so like one at times.”

“But on the ship...”

“Forget the ship. The ship doesn't matter.”

“I wish you'd say your precious revolution doesn't matter either.”

“It does when I have to travel innumerable light-years from Earth in order to make love with you in peace.”

“Still crusading.”

“More than ever now. For you.”

In that case, Avon didn't mind quite so much, though he didn't go so far as to say so. Locking an arm about Blake's neck he heaved the man off him and down, and lumbered none too tenderly on top of him. Avon displayed his most dashing smile. “Don't think you're going to get everything your own way, either.”

“Threat or a promise?” grinned Blake.

“By the time I'm through with you you won't know the difference.”

Those beguiling crinkles appeared around Blake's eyes. Irrelevantly he said, “I care for you tremendously, nothing can change that. I'd do anything to make you happy, as well as anything to keep you by me. My dearest wish is that the two go together. Not in my wildest dreams did I think you'd let me love you.”

“Don't get soppy, Blake. I've better things to do.” Avon met his mouth.

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End file.
